Europe’s historic city centres look dense, busy, cared for, populated with cafes, small shops, monuments, churches, public squares and traffic. On the centre’s edge, even in smaller, poorer cities, ...
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Europe’s historic city centres look dense, busy, cared for, populated with cafes, small shops, monuments, churches, public squares and traffic. On the centre’s edge, even in smaller, poorer cities, there are often concrete towers, gestures to modernity, banking and internationalisation. However, there are also abandoned buildings and derelict spaces. It is easy to see the potential in Europe’s battle-worn cities and their multi-tongued people, just as it is easy to see the broad sweep of world-shaping history. However, many city cores around the centre have become run down, underinvested, unloved, with too many jobless youth and too few enterprising job creators. All of Europe’s cities were not long ago producers of goods. Today, most of those goods come from afar and too many hands, machines and spaces are idle.
This international handbook draws together 10 years of ground-level research into the causes and consequences of Europe’s biggest urban challenge – the loss of industry, jobs and productive capacity. The handbook explores the potential of former industrial cities to offer a new and more sustainable future for a crowded continent under severe environmental constraints and extreme, economic and social pressures. It focuses on cities that not only were the most productive and wealth creating in the not too distant past, but the most reliant on major industries and therefore the hardest hit by their demise. These cities have lived through many phases of growth and decline, and they are experimenting in alternative futures. So they may show us new ways forward.Less

Cities for a Small Continent : International Handbook of City Recovery

Anne Power

Published in print: 2016-05-25

Europe’s historic city centres look dense, busy, cared for, populated with cafes, small shops, monuments, churches, public squares and traffic. On the centre’s edge, even in smaller, poorer cities, there are often concrete towers, gestures to modernity, banking and internationalisation. However, there are also abandoned buildings and derelict spaces. It is easy to see the potential in Europe’s battle-worn cities and their multi-tongued people, just as it is easy to see the broad sweep of world-shaping history. However, many city cores around the centre have become run down, underinvested, unloved, with too many jobless youth and too few enterprising job creators. All of Europe’s cities were not long ago producers of goods. Today, most of those goods come from afar and too many hands, machines and spaces are idle.
This international handbook draws together 10 years of ground-level research into the causes and consequences of Europe’s biggest urban challenge – the loss of industry, jobs and productive capacity. The handbook explores the potential of former industrial cities to offer a new and more sustainable future for a crowded continent under severe environmental constraints and extreme, economic and social pressures. It focuses on cities that not only were the most productive and wealth creating in the not too distant past, but the most reliant on major industries and therefore the hardest hit by their demise. These cities have lived through many phases of growth and decline, and they are experimenting in alternative futures. So they may show us new ways forward.

This chapter addresses how child vigilante squads resist the notion of being “gangs” in India. While child vigilante squads in Indian slums may not appear on the surface to be gangs, they provide ...
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This chapter addresses how child vigilante squads resist the notion of being “gangs” in India. While child vigilante squads in Indian slums may not appear on the surface to be gangs, they provide similar benefits to members as gangs – family, prestige, power, security – and mimic many of the functions of gangs – territorial control, defense of space, defense of community – that have been identified in numerous classic gang studies.Less

Atreyee Sen

Published in print: 2014-08-01

This chapter addresses how child vigilante squads resist the notion of being “gangs” in India. While child vigilante squads in Indian slums may not appear on the surface to be gangs, they provide similar benefits to members as gangs – family, prestige, power, security – and mimic many of the functions of gangs – territorial control, defense of space, defense of community – that have been identified in numerous classic gang studies.

Few studies reflect the critical need to study gangs across time and space. Most investigations focus on a single gang or gangs in a single community, and present the gang in a “snapshot” manner, ...
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Few studies reflect the critical need to study gangs across time and space. Most investigations focus on a single gang or gangs in a single community, and present the gang in a “snapshot” manner, reflecting the nature of the gang at a specific point in time. More importantly, few collections offer comparative studies of gangs across cultures. This volume uniquely offers a thematic approach to engage in concrete comparisons, both contextually and transnationally, of gangs In Brazil, China, El Salvador, France, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Sierra Leone, South Africa, the USA. Each chapter is based on direct primary empirical research, and the collection is framed by a critical Introduction by the editors and an Afterword by renowned US gang researcher Sudhir Venkatesh. The volume is likely to reach a wide-ranging audience across disciplines, including: anthropology, criminology, development studies, geography, history, international studies, law, political science, sociology, and urban studies. It could serves as a foundational text for advanced undergraduate level courses on conflict and violence, urban security studies, or informal politics, for example, as well as a useful resource at the MA level..Less

Global Gangs : Street Violence across the World

Published in print: 2014-08-01

Few studies reflect the critical need to study gangs across time and space. Most investigations focus on a single gang or gangs in a single community, and present the gang in a “snapshot” manner, reflecting the nature of the gang at a specific point in time. More importantly, few collections offer comparative studies of gangs across cultures. This volume uniquely offers a thematic approach to engage in concrete comparisons, both contextually and transnationally, of gangs In Brazil, China, El Salvador, France, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Sierra Leone, South Africa, the USA. Each chapter is based on direct primary empirical research, and the collection is framed by a critical Introduction by the editors and an Afterword by renowned US gang researcher Sudhir Venkatesh. The volume is likely to reach a wide-ranging audience across disciplines, including: anthropology, criminology, development studies, geography, history, international studies, law, political science, sociology, and urban studies. It could serves as a foundational text for advanced undergraduate level courses on conflict and violence, urban security studies, or informal politics, for example, as well as a useful resource at the MA level..

This chapter explores the similarities and differences between gangs and militias in post-war Sierra Leone, focusing in particular on the continuities between wartime armed groups and post-conflict ...
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This chapter explores the similarities and differences between gangs and militias in post-war Sierra Leone, focusing in particular on the continuities between wartime armed groups and post-conflict gangs, their ties to the political culture, and the constant efforts of youths to both gain entry into “the system”, while at the same time rebelling against it.Less

“Playing the Game”: Gang–Militia Logics in War-Torn Sierra Leone

Mats Utas

Published in print: 2014-08-01

This chapter explores the similarities and differences between gangs and militias in post-war Sierra Leone, focusing in particular on the continuities between wartime armed groups and post-conflict gangs, their ties to the political culture, and the constant efforts of youths to both gain entry into “the system”, while at the same time rebelling against it.

This chapter investigates how economic factors shaped the emergence of gangs in France between the 1950s and 1970s, and the way that politics subsequently transformed the nature of gang formation in ...
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This chapter investigates how economic factors shaped the emergence of gangs in France between the 1950s and 1970s, and the way that politics subsequently transformed the nature of gang formation in the 1980s and 1990s.Less

From black Jackets to zulus: social Imagination, Myth, and Reality Concerning French Gangs

Marwan Mohammed

Published in print: 2014-08-01

This chapter investigates how economic factors shaped the emergence of gangs in France between the 1950s and 1970s, and the way that politics subsequently transformed the nature of gang formation in the 1980s and 1990s.

This chapter underscores the strategic – and variable – political discourse about gangs in Brazil, and how this obscures the close relationships that often exist between criminal gangs and state ...
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This chapter underscores the strategic – and variable – political discourse about gangs in Brazil, and how this obscures the close relationships that often exist between criminal gangs and state security actors.Less

Gang Politics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Enrique Desmond Arias

Published in print: 2014-08-01

This chapter underscores the strategic – and variable – political discourse about gangs in Brazil, and how this obscures the close relationships that often exist between criminal gangs and state security actors.